The arrival of Missourian William Becknell's party at Santa Fe in 1821 ushered in the era of the annual "Santa Fe trade" between the United States and the Mexican settlements to the south and opened the famous route known as the Santa Fe Trail. Of even greater significance, but largely overlooked today, is the fact that it also opened a road from the United States connecting with a major Mexican high way, for Santa Fe was the terminus of the 1,600-mile Camino Real, the "King's Highway," stretching southward to Chihuahua and the interior cities of Mexico. Over this Royal Road between Santa Fe and Chihuahua lumbered the caravans of the Santa Fe traders, who exchanged American dry goods and hardware for Mexican silver and mules. Over it, too, traveled Colonel Doniphan's Missouri Volunteers, bent on establishing the boundary of Texas at the Rio Grande. Indeed, without this main artery of travel, the history of both the United States and Mexico might have been vastly different. This book tells the exciting story of the Chihuahua Trail, of the volume and value of the frontier commerce, its peculiar trade practices, the risks of the road, and the government controls exercised by both countries. But, more than that, it tells of the traders themselves and their influence on the government and citizenry of New Mexico, an influence strong enough to destroy that province's will to resist when the Mexican War broke out in 1846, and of their role in the war and their importance in making New Mexico into an American territory. Max L. Moorhead was professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and editor of the Santa Fe trader Josiah Gregg's classic account COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES, published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Mark L. Gardner is the editor of BROTHERS ON THE SANTA FE AND CHIHUAHUA TRAILS: EDWARD JAMES GLASGOW AND WILLIAM HENRY GLASGOW, 1846-1848.

On their return to New Mexico from El Paso after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, the New Mexican settlers were confronted with continuous raids by hostile Indians tribes, disease and an inhospitable landscape. In spite of this, in the early and mid-eighteenth century, the New Mexicans went about their daily lives as best they could, as shown in original documents from the time. The documents show them making deals, traveling around the countryside and to and from El Paso and Mexico City, complaining about and arguing with each other, holding festivals, and making plans for the future of their children. It also shows them interacting with the presidio soldiers, the Franciscan friars and Inquisition officials, El Paso and Chihuahua merchants, the occasional Frenchman, and their Pueblo Indian allies. Because many of the documents include oral testimony, we are able to read what they had to say, sometimes angry, asking for help, or giving excuses for their behavior, as written down by a scribe at the time. This book includes fifty-four original handwritten documents from the early and mid-eighteenth century. Most of the original documents are located in the Spanish Archives of New Mexico, although some are from the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico City, and elsewhere. They were selected for their description of Spanish Colonial life, of interest to the many descendants of the characters that appear in them, and because they tell a good story. A translation and transcription of each document is included as well as a synopsis, background notes, and biographical notes. They can be considered a companion, in part, to Ralph Emerson Twitchell’s 1914 two volumes, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, summarizing the documents of the Spanish Archives of New Mexico, now available in new editions from Sunstone Press.

Through New Mexico’s Official Scenic Historic Markers we learn about the people, the geological features, and the historical events that have made the Land of Enchantment a place unlike any other. An index to our history, these markers tell an incredible story about our cultures and origins. This revised and expanded edition of Roadside New Mexico provides additional information about these sites and includes approximately one hundred new markers, sixty-five of which document the contribution of women to the history of New Mexico. Now structured alphabetically for easier identification, each essay also offers suggestions of similar Historic Markers to help readers explore each topic further. In addition, Pike includes entries on “Ghost Markers”—those sites missing from the road that still impart significant historical lessons. Roadside New Mexico delivers a useful companion for travelers who want to understand more about the landscapes and inhabitants of the state.

In this groundbreaking study, historian Michael J. Alarid examines New Mexico’s transition from Spanish to Mexican to US control during the nineteenth century and illuminates how emerging class differences played a crucial role in the regime change. After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, trade between Mexico and the United States attracted wealthy Hispanos into a new market economy and increased trade along El Camino Real, turning it into a burgeoning exchange route. As landowning Hispanos benefited from the Santa Fe trade, traditional relationships between wealthy and poor Nuevomexicanos—whom Alarid calls patrónes and vecinos—started to shift. Far from being displaced by US colonialism, wealthy Nuevomexicanos often worked in concert with new American officials after US troops marched into New Mexico in 1846, and in the process, Alarid argues, the patrónes abandoned their customary obligations to vecinos, who were now evolving into a working class. Wealthy Nuevomexicanos, the book argues, succeeded in preserving New Mexico as a Hispano bastion, but they did so at the expense of poor vecinos.